Brad Pitt Loves Being Directed by Angelina Jolie

Actor promotes family drama “By the Sea” in V Magazine

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt first worked together on the action thriller “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” on whose set they also became romantically involved. Until this year, they refused to do another movie together out of fear that their tabloid persona would overshadow it, but that’s about to change with “By the Sea.”

“By the Sea” is the story of a married couple dealing with loss, on the verge of coming apart. It will be out on November 13 in the hope of qualifying for the awards season, and was - strangely enough - shot during what should have been Angelina and Brad’s honeymoon.

“I trust her with my life”

In addition to starring Hollywood’s most powerful couple as a couple, “By the Sea” also got plenty of media attention for being directed by Angelina, off a script she wrote. This is Angelina’s passion project, and Brad is only along for the ride, helping her tell her story, he says in a new interview for V Magazine.

You can see some gorgeous portraits of Brad channeling Robert Redford, from the V Mag spread, in the gallery below.

“It’s surprising how much I enjoy the direction of my wife,” Brad explains. “She’s decisive, incredibly intuitive, knife-sharp, and might I say, sexy at her post. I trust her with my life. The plan was to make something together, with complete autonomy. […] We, by our own admission, were overdue. If I’m going to work, I want to work with my wife.”

He admits that shooting a drama about a failed marriage isn’t the ideal way to spend a honeymoon, but he chooses to look at the silver lining: marriage is about working together towards a common goal, and that’s exactly what they did when they shot this movie.

He also says that he didn’t want to let Angelina down by not being able to bring her words to life in front of the camera, and jokes that the role was a perfect fit for him: he plays a drunk because he has plenty of experience as one.

Early Oscar buzz

“By the Sea” won’t get a wide release as a major studio film would, which means that the media buzz around it will also be moderate. This is a movie made for the awards season, so all promotion will serve the purpose of bringing it to the attention of the critics, not the wide audience.

You can see a first trailer embedded below.

Even though it’s still early, the film is already getting some Oscar buzz, in the sense that people are saying this might be Jolie’s shot at a Best Director nomination in the upcoming Oscar race. Then again, people said the same about her “Unbroken” last year, and nothing came out of all that talk.